Laurie Graham

Laurie has had a wide and varied professional life. She was the first female to graduate from AEG’s “Tool School” on the eastern seaboard, which pioneered the idea of women participating in the sales of industrial power tools. As a result, she became a sought-after icon in the Washington, DC area in her pink hardhat and boots!

Laurie then turned her attention to design, fashioning interiors for numerous restaurants in the Northern Virginia/DC area. She continues to accept random interior projects for friends and family as an outlet for her creativity. In fact she ran her own interior decorating and wallpapering business while she was a military spouse, raising two little girls.  In March the Home Section, a tab of the the Virginian Pilot's ran a story about Laurie and her fiancee Chris's renovation projects in their condominium.  They said a Laurie and Chris are a "match made in Do-it-Yourself Heaven"!

Hired as a Registrar/Financial Aid Officer for a Beauty College Chain based in Dallas, she won the company’s highest sales award after only 6 months.  And she did it again the following year, earning a promotion to the company’s trainer position where she traveled to 32 different schools to present her own sales training program.  Later as an account manager for a marketing company in Salem, Virginia, she created promotional programs for clients including The Learning and Discovery Channels, Overnite Trucking and WonderCamp.

Along with her sometimes crazy and busy lifestyle, she has raised two successful daughters, who both graduated from Virginia Colleges in May 2008 and are both working in the medical field.  Jenna is a lab technologist and Kelli is a traveling emergency room nurse.